Signing the loan agreement for financing of the Pea Ridge wastewater treatment plant, Mayor Jackie Crabtree commended all who had worked diligently on the project.

"We are happy. It's been a long process, much more so than 10 years ago," Ken Hayes, superintendent for the Water Utilities Department, said. "We actually started the preliminary engineering report about three years and three months ago. It's been a very, very long process.

"A lot of things changed, just like the temporary financing," Hayes explained, adding that government allowed temporary financing, then "got away from it in the '70s and '80s" and is now going back to it. "It's been a complicated process."

The Water Utilities Department is an enterprise fund, Hayes said.

"It's not a municipality. Rates are set based on the cost to operate the utility."

The current plant was built in the mid-1980s and was a good investment for its time.

"Without that plant, Pea Ridge Could never have grown to 2,000," Hayes said. "It was a good plant. A good investment."

The new plant is designed to handle the needs of the city for many years to come, Hayes said. The new plant will treat 1 million gallons a day and cost $7,811,259.